Arik - The Life Of Ariel Sharon by David Landau

professional. While he was still speaking, I stood up and said, “I thought we were here to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the Bar-Lev Line. That’s the reason for this meeting and that’s what I’m willing to participate in, so that I can tell you again what a dangerous and stupid idea it is …”
    Dayan cut in. “Arik, you’ve been invited to a General Headquarters meeting. It’s not up to you to decide what’s going to be discussed.”
    “Maybe not,” I said, “but if you proceed with this, it’s going to be without me.”
    When I sat down, everything was quiet for a moment; then Gavish took up right where he had left off. With that I got up again, announced that I wouldn’t take part in it, then walked toward the door. Behind me I heard Dayan’s, “Arik, you can’t do that. You have to come back.
Come back!
” The door slamming behind me cut off his voice.
    As I walked down the corridor, I knew with absolute certainty that I was right and they were wrong, that the Bar-Lev Line was bound to bring us disaster. But it was no pleasure when four years later it did exactly that.
    A few days after the door-slamming episode, an officer from the adjutant general’s office phoned to ask how Sharon wanted to receive his accumulated leave—as vacation or in cash. Bar-Lev, he learned, would not approve a further extension of his contract. He appealed to Dayan, only to be told, “Bar-Lev doesn’t want you; I don’t see how I can interfere.” Golda Meir, the new prime minister (Eshkol had died suddenly in February 1969), also declined to step in on his behalf.
    Sharon now conducted a brief but very public flirt with leaders of the parliamentary opposition. Was he just posturing in order to put pressure on Golda and the government to overrule Bar-Lev? Or was he seriously preparing to embark on a political career? Unsurprisingly, Sharon himself endorses the latter version. But even if he was being disingenuous, his account is entertaining:
    At the age of forty-one I was not exactly ready for pipe and slippers.
    As I thought about it, political life came to seem more and more attractive. I certainly had ideas … and 1969 was an election year. At that time I had two good friends in the political world with whom I occasionally talked about such things. One wasPinchas Sapir, the minister of finance and an importantLabor party leader … He was fromKfar Saba, quite near my parents’ farm, and I had known him from childhood.
    The other was Josef Sapir (no relation to Pinchas), the head of theLiberal party. I had known him too since I was young. He had been born into a family of citrus growers in Petach Tikva … and when I was a child I occasionally went with my father to their farm to get graftings for our own trees.
    Since 1965, Sapir’s Liberals had been in alliance with Menachem Begin’sHerut Party in an electoral bloc calledGahal, g a first attempt at creating a credible alternative to Labor. Sapir took Sharon to see Begin.
    My meeting with Begin and Sapir took place in the King David Hotel, in a chilly air-conditioned room whose windows looked out on the walls of theOld City of Jerusalem. It was a cordial meeting. But as the talk went on, I began to feel a cold sweat forming on my back. In later years my relationship with Begin evolved considerably. But during this meeting I was more than a little uncomfortable. Although the discussion was friendly, there was something about the way Begin spoke, and especially the way he looked at me. The man had an extraordinarily powerful presence. And as he spoke, from minute to minute I had more of a feeling that I was getting involved in something I could not control…
    He was talking about how I would be included with them in the election, and that if we were successful I would join them in the government, all the things that I had supposed I wanted to hear. But as he spoke, I became more and more aware of the man’s strength and determination.